9.4 Devotional - God's House

0:00Matthew chapter 25 verse 40, and the King will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. Amen I have always loved God's house. I bet you do too. Church is a place to grow through the preaching and teaching of his word. It's a consecrated space where the Holy Spirit reveals truth and quickens our hearts to action. A church is also a house of worship and prayer where God's kingdom seems near to us. In God's house we come together and lift our praises and touch God's heart. Church is also a place to connect with one another, to share Konaniyah, true fellowship with a great diversity of people all knit together like a big family. With so many things to talk about and do together. So it only seems right to jump in. Let me now have served as youth and children and family ministry leaders for most of our

1:04adult lives. We were not long into our marriage when the Holy Spirit knocked on our heart store. Which sounds silly, but it actually happened that way. It simply became the most important thing in our lives to bring God's story to life in the lives of his people through the welcoming doors of a community church. So we taught in classrooms, we ran summer programs, we wrote and acted out Bible story skits to compliment sermons. We preached, we created family and children's church curriculums, we taught other leaders. We went to Bible school, we went to conferences, we led worship. One time we converted the entire gymnasium into a life-size candy land game for family day and held an enormous block party for God. All of it in God's house. If there's one lesson we have learned in all that time, it is that God's love always

2:04breaks through the toughest things the world can throw at anyone. To heal, to bring hope, to restore. Especially when that love is given freely, steadily, liberally and together in unity as we do in church. Here is one small story to share from our days in children's church. There was a time when we served in a pretty large, multi-racial, multicultural church in Southern Minnesota. We had about five classrooms all going at the same time anywhere from five to thirty kids in each one. No matter which classroom we were in, we usually tried to be in together. We would start out with a declaration. That said, welcome to church where you are loved and there's nothing you can do about it. Then we would have a greeting time and remind everyone that. Christians are the friendliest people on earth. In these classrooms we saw little prim girls tossing their hair, dressed in dresses and

3:11holding pink bibles. There were loud little boys in shorts and tees, even in the winter, who wanted to run and holler. There were kids whose faces sparkled. They jumped to the front of the line to volunteer. And there were others that were quite shy and hid as far back as they could. I remember one such little boy who would come to church every few weeks. He was more but never consistently. He was not energetic or very handsome as a little guy. Spiritually his forecast seemed perpetually cloudy. His heart was like a black hole that you could pour most positive words into but no light seemed to register. Rather, you were greeted by a blank expression when he came through the door and a blank expression when he left. At times he seemed hungry for real food, not just spiritual, so we had snacks ready for

4:13him that we would slip to him. We kept trail bars for just circumstances which was more frequent than it really should have been for far too many kids. We inquired about this little guy with other leaders in the church and heard that he lived in a broken home with tons of problems. But his grandmother came to church and wanted him to come too, so she picked him up on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays. Now the truth is that there is no and suddenly moment in this story. We saw him often on for a few years. But not every miracle in church is instantaneous. As time went by, we began to see changes happening. One day he started laughing in class at Fuzzball, the wild puppet, and Baba the shy one. On another day he made a particularly nice Bible story craft at the craft table and wanted

5:15us particularly to see it. On another you could see that he had dressed up for church, with color not just the same black on blue jeans. Little by little his legs started dancing with happiness when he jumped in line for an activity. Then one morning he stopped at the door on his way out of the classroom, looked up into my face and said, I love you, and hugged my side and ran off back into his world. All at church. Now that might seem pretty small and if you don't watch closely with your spiritual eyes open you can miss it. But Jesus walks among us at church. He shares in our labors. To him it means everything to love the least of his flock. As you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me. By the way we are David and Amy Habrat. We came to life bridge seven years ago. We lead a 20s and 30s small group at our home.

6:18And our full time substitutes for Jamie and Adam for life bridge kids. If you want to hear more stories about how God is moving in his house we would be honored to share them. If you really want to see it first hand jump in.